Anyone still think news pay walls will work after looking at this chart?

Check out the following survey done by paidContent:UK. They asked people what they’d do if their favourite news site started charging – note their favourite site, not just any old online news service.

The result? Three quarters would go elsewhere, while only one in twenty would pay to get past the online toll booth. The Wall Street Journal aside, which appeals to a specialist audience that will (and does) pay, looks like Murdoch’s pay walls could be a sure fire way for his papers to lose 95% of their web traffic.

According to Harris Research’s Andrew Freeman, who carried out the study for paidContent, “As long as free alternatives exist, consumers will turn to them for their daily news information, meaning heavy losses in terms of audience figures for those that charge.”

Even given the guff that we’ll no doubt hear that the remaining 5% is more ‘valuable’, committed, blah, blah, wonder what advertisers will make of that one.